Page 209 of Deep Cover

14

Cole

"We've got it."

They'd said that before. This time it was a team, arrived on one of the Pharma company's private jets because private jets are the way to get big guns into other countries.

Jason, making up for his dereliction of duty when Annie was hurt at the dinner party. Jefferson, head of security. Launder, newly recruited from a SWAT team.

This time they had the address, surveillance, photos from city cameras, from satellite images, from phones in the hands of people called in from across the city. This time there was positive identification of Vincent, more than 90 percent certainty, backed up by someone seeing an Asian woman with cuts on her face jogging through the neighborhood.

For the past several days I'd been numb. The cameras had caught Vincent in a limo and Annie with him. Not just the leaked photos from the event he'd thrown. Because that could be classic diversion, Vincent letting them be leaked as a red herring.

This was intel. This was a sighting.

This felt right.

For the first time in days, I could feel again. Now anxiety and apprehension and anticipation all warred inside me. I felt jittery and keyed up, several cups of espresso ready for the break in and the rescue.

And the takedown of Vincent Geddes and if she was there, probably Kie.

I'd take Annie and we'd fade. We could go anywhere in the world. Or we could go back to Vegas. She could get therapy for whatever he'd done to her and whatever opiate addiction still lingered or – and I'd kill him slow if this happened – if it had been reawakened by the kidnapping and whatever he’d put her through.

If she was marked.

If –

Head in the game, St. Martin. I'd been too late with Emily. I'd known she was turning tricks, my sister, the one my father exiled from the family because she dared to have feelings. She'd fallen down and broken apart when the family started going through shit and our Grandmother died. That spread to her running away and running away led to my father disciplining her over and over, a little too much, a little too long, and a lot too often.

Emily ran. By the time I found her again, the opiates she'd been taking sporadically to survive in our household had become a full blown addiction. She was in Los Angeles, and she was a prostitute, supporting her habit more than she supported anything else.

I was not going to be too late with Annie. That was it. That was all. What I needed to do was rescue her. I'd rescued Ariel, to an extent. In the long run, perhaps the very long run, I thought Ariel might return to some kind of life.

If I thought it would take, I'd bring Kie out. But the little bitch was as cruel as her master. He'd have driven her mad if she hadn't been a psychopath to start with. There was no way to save her.

But Annie.

Only because she was my responsibility. Only because no more addicted girls were dying on my watch.

That was all.

Cole St. Martin doesn't get involved. If she thought differently when I showed up, she'd figure it out when the cleansing started.

But I had to get to her.

Before it was too late.

Because everything else aside - This was Annie.

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